Press On | The Eddie Willner Story

Gathering Earth |

The Eddie Willner story tells the amazing Holocaust survivor story of German teenager Eddie Willner from growing up in Monchengladbach, Germany to his flight to Belgium following Kristallnacht in November 1938 and six years later his dramatic escape from the Langerstein Death March in April 1945.

The series follows Eddie Willner's family throughout the war and his son's effort to retrace his father's footsteps 80 years later.

Eddie flees Germany in 1938 and is joined by his parents in 1939 as persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany takes on sinister proportions as Jews are sent to labor camps and their homes and belongings are confiscated. On the first day of Germany's invasion of Belgium, Eddie's father Siegfried is arrested in May 1940 in a round up of all German adult males and is handed over to French authorities who deport him to the Saint Cyprien internment camp in southern France where some of the half million Spanish Republicans fleeing Fascist Spain have been kept since 1939.

Eddie and his mother Auguste while attempting to find Seigfried, are arrested by Belgian police as they try to cross the border into France at Werwik. They are handed over to the French who deport them to the Gurs internment camp in France.

France is conquered by Germany in June 1940 and the Vichy Government takes control of the internment camps.

For the next two years, Seigfried is relocated a number of times eventually ending up at the Rivesaltes internment camp. Meanwhile, Eddie and his mother are released from the Gurs internment camps and with falsified documents provided by the Mayor of Ortaffa and housing provided by a priest, they remain free and able to visit Seigfried. Eddie works in the vineyards, building up his strength and earning a small income.

During a visit to his father, Eddie who has turned 15 is unexpectedly not allowed to leave and is now interned along with his father. He is now part of the vast network of slave labor set up by the Vichy government. Both of them escape the Rivesaltes camp with the help of a sympathetic guard and remain free for a few months. It is the last time the family will be free and together.

In August 1942, the Nazis with the help of the French Vichy government round up all Jews in France who are transported to Drancy outside Paris. From there they are sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz.

Eddie who has turned 16 is selected along with his father to be sent to the Lazy labor camp near Katowice, Poland. Auguste is separated from them and upon arrival at the Juden Rampe in Birkenau-Auschwitz is exterminated in The Little Red House gas chamber as the Final Solution is made official Nazi policy.

Eddie and his father are tattooed and work in Auschwitz labor sub camps for the next two years. Eventually they end up in Blechhammer concentration camp where they are put to work building and repairing bunkers destroyed by the US 15th Army Air Force bombing raids on the high priority target of the Nazi synthetic fuel complex at Blechhammer.

His father grows weak and when he turns 50 in November 1944, he is taken away and exterminated.

In January as Soviet forces close in on Auschwitz, Eddie along with thousands of other concentration camp prisoners is marched west. This is the first Death March Eddie survives in the freezing winter of January 1945.

After time in Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald Concentration camps, he eventually ends up at the Langenstein Concentration Camp where is put to work digging tunnels for the planned advanced turbo jet fighter assembly complex in the Harz Mountains in the heart of Germany.

Hundreds of prisoners die from starvation, disease, suicide, executions and mining accidents. As Allied Forces close in on Langerstein, the off-site crematorium is no longer operational and Eddie is put to work digging mass graves and collecting bodies for those who die.

On April 9th, 1945, as American forces advance from the west, Eddie and all prisoners able to walk are marched out of camp eastward on another Death March. On April 12th, the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies, Eddie and five other prisoners make an attempt to escape as US war planes pass overhead. He and his Dutch friend are successful and after fives days they make their way through German lines to give themselves up to the US 3rd Armored Division near the Elbe River.

Eddie Willner has lost all his close relatives except for an uncle who made his way to Bolivia. He stays with the 3rd Army for six months and eventually makes his way to the United States and joins the US Army.

After a career in the military and raising six children, he dies at the age of 81 in 2008 in Falls Church, Virginia. His son, Albert Willner, retired from the military, is documenting his father's story and will be walking the Death March from Auschwitz to Gross-Rosen to commemorate the 75th anniversary evacuation of the Nazi death camps in occupied Poland.